


Empty

by Snowy_the_Sane_Fangirl



Category: Homestuck, MS Paint Adventures
Genre: Family Fluff, Gen, John is just mentioned really, Movie Watching, Pizza, this is really self-indulgent I'm sorry
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-08-01
Updated: 2015-08-01
Packaged: 2018-04-12 08:27:36
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,941
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4472342
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Snowy_the_Sane_Fangirl/pseuds/Snowy_the_Sane_Fangirl
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>An evening with Bro and Dave.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Empty

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Kat_e](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Kat_e/gifts).



> DAVE: maybe if it hadnt been casting a pall over our apartment 24/7 since he took me in...  
> DAVE: grinning...  
> DAVE: glaring...  
> DAVE: laughing in my sleep... 
> 
> DIRK: Right.  
> DIRK: My version is "empty", apparently.  
> DIRK: Whatever that means.

“Lil Cal is very disappointed in you, young man.” Keeping a straight face wasn't a challenge for Bro Strider. The secret to being able to talk perfectly seriously about the emotions of the puppet that currently sat on the man's shoulder was that on some level, he actually believed it.

It was clear that Dave actually believed it too, which was probably the primary reason for his first grade teacher's shocked expression. Mrs. Logan didn't interfere, though. Regardless of the unorthodox way it was being meted out, justice, in her opinion, was being served.

Bro didn't uncross his arms as Dave shifted a little uncomfortably in front of him. He practically oozed nervousness out of every pore in his body, and wow, the teacher was really getting a kick out of this. Her mouth was twisted up into a smile that she wasn't even trying very hard to hide. The fuck kind of a teacher was she? Not the kind that should be given free reign over a room full of kids. Anyone who was this interested in seeing a kid get chewed out wasn't the sort of person who should be in charge of kids. He knew _that_ from painful experience.

Dave looked uncomfortable and scared, but he didn't look down or away from Bro as the man continued to scold him, after his own fashion. “So your teacher says you were in a fight.”

“Yeah,” Dave said. His voice was loud, but a little trembly. Maybe it would piss the teacher off that the kid was clearly more concerned with what his older brother and his weird puppet thought than with what she thought.

“A fight that started out as a rap battle?”

“Yeah.”

“And then devolved into a fistfight?”

“His rapping was pretty fuckin' awful,” Dave said. “I couldn't stand to listen to it anymore. It was like nails on a chalkboard.” Ah, the metaphor he didn't understand because he'd never seen a chalkboard in his life, but used anyway because he heard other people using it. That was so fuckin' adorable.

Bro nodded, slowly. The teacher looked like Christmas had come early. “Dave, you can't do shit like that.” Lil Cal mysteriously nodded in agreement, and it was a bit of a challenge to not smirk when Mrs. Logan did a double-take. “You can start a rap battle or a fistfight, but you cant fuck up the line between them and have one turn into the other. Shit's not cool.”

Dave nodded, letting his gaze drop a bit as if he were ashamed. The kid was getting good at hiding his emotions behind those triangular shades, though, so Bro honestly couldn't be sure. Mrs. Logan straightened up, looking offended. Bro had been expecting that, though. “Alright, look, I'll deal with it,” he said to her. “It won't happen again.”

After she was satisfied, Bro led Dave out of her office and down the school hallway. “You got all your shit?” he asked.

“Yeah,” Dave replied. “Are you changing my school again? It was just a fistfight. Come on, Bro.”

“You got any friends around here?” the older Strider asked.

Dave shook his head.

“Didn't think so. That woman was one of your teachers, right?”

“Yeah,” the kid replied. “Somethin' wrong with her?”

Bro shrugged as they reached the door and he pushed it open, letting the two of them out of the fancy private school. “Do you like her? 'Cause I don't.”

Dave shrugged, but Bro was pretty sure that meant no, he didn't like Mrs. Logan. “You said it wouldn't happen again, though,” he reminded Bro.

“Shit involving you can't happen to you if you're not around.” The man smirked. “Look, we'll get you signed up at a new school, you'll have an adjustment period, but you'll be fine.” It would be harder than that, but Dave didn't need to know that. Wasn't his job. In the meantime, it was Thursday. He had all weekend to figure something out. “Want to get pizza?”

“We had pizza last night,” Dave pointed out.

“Yeah, I know. I was there. Want pizza again tonight?”

“Fuck yes."

Bro didn't ask Dave how school was. Honestly, he didn't care that much. School was a necessity, kind of like going to the bathroom. He never asked Dave how his toilet trip was. Shit would just be weird. Of course, when he was really young sometimes Dave would tell him anyway, but that kind of behavior was pretty quickly relegated to a several-tiers-of-irony exercise, AKA don't do it around the unworthy, AKA everyone.

The kid knew better than to tell him about school, too. He'd used to do that. Apparently at school kids were encouraged to talk to their parents about it, like they were supposed to like it or something. Fucking preposterous. He'd put an end to that behavior by asking Dave if he looked like his goddamn father. Really? Did he? No, he fucking didn't! Yeah, school sucks, kid. Man up and fucking deal with it. It's supposed to.

So the drive home featured no conversation about school – instead, they discussed more interesting things. A plot twist in an anime they both watched, and Dave obviously was beginning to think was stupid. He hadn't said anything about it yet, though. As long as he still enjoyed it, or fooled himself into thinking he enjoyed it, Bro would be cool with it. He would never tell anyone, especially not Dave, but he did actually enjoy doing things that were not roof strife with him. Teaching the kid how to take and mete out a beating was important, but other stuff was fun too.

The conversation turned to a new video game, one Bro had a heavy hand in the development of. It was unbelievably glitchy and he was proud of that fact, but he already had ambitious plans in the works for glitchier games still. Dave hadn't quite wrapped his head around the point of all that yet.

“I can't get past the level six street,” he said. “It keeps on freezing and sometimes the whole screen starts blitzing out like a fuckin' disco ball.”

“You're not supposed to get past the level six street,” Bro commented, most of his attention on the driving. He didn't look at Dave when he spoke. “It's designed to be completely impassable.”

Dave didn't respond to that, and Bro glanced over at him in the passenger seat, with Cal balanced between them on the armrest in the middle of the car. If the kid was looking at him, it was hidden behind his shades pretty well. That was good. That was the way he was supposed to not express emotion. Letting other people know what you were really thinking was invariably a bad idea.

That was a lesson Bro had made extra sure to teach Dave from a young age. Other people couldn't understand his emotions, and the solution was to hide them behind shades. Not in so many words, of course. The shades were cool. He was too cool to share his emotions. Fuck other people and their narrow-mindedness and weird issues with the way people who weren't them felt.

“But I saw you playing the level eight hallway,” Dave said suddenly.

“Yeah, I have the cheat codes to get past the level six street. They'll be 'leaked' in GameBro in a few months. The whole game is mostly functional, but there are places you can't win. It's all part of the game.”

“Uh-huh,” Dave said, his voice just barely displaying some incredulity.

“You'll figure it out eventually. This is some higher-level irony, kid.”

That shut him up. Irony, he'd found, was something Dave idolized, as he should, and would do anything to eventually achieve. And not ask questions about. It was really handy to have a quick and easy way to shut the kid up when he needed him quiet. Even if it _had_ compromised the definition of irony more than a little.

They stopped at a little takeout pizza place and ordered pineapple and chicken, an ironic favorite. It was actually pretty disgusting to Bro, but he thought Dave might genuinely like it. Which was fucking weird, but whatever, he supposed.

From there, it was only about seven minutes back to the apartment. The older Strider pulled up in the parking lot and they headed into the building, Dave carefully carrying the pizza. Hey, he was the one that actually liked that bullshit. He could carry it. Bro carried Lil Cal in one hand. Some people thought it was weird and childish that he carried the puppet everywhere with him, but most were intimidated by it. If anyone started getting too nosy or rude (not that he cared what they thought), he could easily arrange some impromptu puppet stalking that would shut them up. One of the best things about Cal was that he could shut people up in a hurry.

They didn't speak on the way up to the apartment. When they stepped inside, Dave immediately rushed to the kitchen and put the pizza on the counter, then ran into his room, presumably to dump his stuff, or maybe boot up his computer. Bro walked up to the pizza, opened the box, and grabbed a slice. It was fucking disgusting but it was food.

Dave reappeared with a home-burned DVD. “I'm using the TV for about two hours,” he said. “John's been telling me to watch this stupid-assed movie for weeks and I finally said I would just to shut him up.”

“Can't you watch that shit on your computer?” Bro asked, more than a little disgruntled at the interruption to his regular schedule of play video games until he fell asleep on the couch.

“Egderp said I've gotta watch it in super-high definition or whatever because apparently it's got good special effects or something.” Egderp. That was a new one. Cute.

“Fine,” Bro said. He wasn't giving up the futon, though. He walked over and sat down on it before grabbing the remote and switching the TV source from the Xbox to the DVD player. “Pop it in.”

Dave grabbed himself a slice of pizza and a bottle of apple juice – pineapple, chicken, and apple juice? Really? - before he headed over and put the DVD in the tray, then pushed it shut. “Get your fat ass over. More than one of us are trying to use the fucking couch.”

“Yeah, yeah, don't take up the whole thing,” Bro replied as he scooted over as little as he possibly could. He hit play, and the movie started right away. Obviously Dave had stolen it and burned it to a disc himself. It was like having a library but not having to actually go to it or wait for your shit to be shipped in. Just like a library. It wasn't like they were going to watch it more than once anyway.

The dramatic opening to some disaster film began, and it was already pretty obvious that the special effects were actually pretty bad. Bro rolled his eyes and glanced away from the TV screen. His eyes met those of Lil Cal, lying on the couch beside him. Those eyes were really, really blue, and that was part of what he liked so much about them. It sounded stupid and almost romantic, but it was – well, it wasn't even ironic, really. They were nice eyes. Really, really blue, and really, really deep. And somehow, really, reassuringly empty.

A meteor rushed toward earth and a man rushed to stop it, and beside him, Dave shifted on the couch and leaned back, perfectly at ease.

**Author's Note:**

> AKA Raising Children According to Bro Strider AKA the AU in Which Bro is Slightly Less of an Asshole than it Turns Out He is in Canon.
> 
> Basic premise is what if Bro was sent to Earth with the empty Cal.
> 
> Everything is sunshine and roses until you realize that this means Dirk got Lil Cal LE Edition. BUT LET'S IGNORE THAT AND FOCUS ON BRO AND DAVE.
> 
> Anyway, I don't think Bro would be totally non-abusive without Cal's influence, and I've tried to reflect that in the story. But at the same time, I don't think Cal being around helped, so I think without him, or without the evil version of him, things would be better. At the very least, there could be some semblance of genuine affection between the two, confused and obscured by irony as it is.
> 
> IDK just take it.


End file.
